LOWELL -- When Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis first became an officer 35 years ago, law enforcement was focused on making a high number of arrests.

"We've learned that's a stupid way to do business," Davis told a room full of Middlesex Community College students and community members Thursday at the school's Constitution Day event. "It really is, and it's gotten us in all kinds of trouble with the community. The truth of the matter is, it's better to do everything you can do to prevent crime without arresting somebody."

Davis, whose response to the Boston Marathon bombings in April earned him national praise, started his career in the Lowell Police Department in 1978, which he ultimately led as superintendent before taking the Boston job in 2006.

He was welcomed back to the Mill City by people he called old friends, including Deputy Police Superintendent Arthur Ryan, Capt. Kelly Richardson, retired Chelmsford Police Chief Raymond McKeon, Middlesex Community College President Carole Cowan and Middlesex Executive Director of Public Affairs Patrick Cook.

"When (Davis) announced he was going off to Boston, our hearts sank a little because we were losing him," Cowan said. "But look what's happened. He took over the Boston Police Department ... and then lo and behold, the events of last April take hold, and we see Ed Davis front and center, leading after a terrorist attack."

Davis' talk focused on the immediate moments and days after the marathon.

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His first inkling of how bad the situation was, he said, came when he heard one of his most experienced officers yelling frantically and unintelligibly over the radio.

Speaking in honor of the 226th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, Davis described that document and the rights it protects as a cornerstone of police work.

"It's a living, breathing document," he said. "It lives every time a police officer makes a stop, every time we plan a raid on a house or execute a search warrant or an arrest warrant."

While authorities searched for the two marathon bombing suspects in April and later sought to prosecute the surviving one, Davis said constitutional rights were at the forefront of their minds, including the right to a fair trial and safeguards against self-incrimination and unreasonable search and seizure.

He said he hadn't heard of the federal law prohibiting the reading of Miranda rights to a terrorism suspect until U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz's office called him during the search, asking him not to advise alleged bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of his rights.

"I said, 'Who is this? This is the U.S. Attorney's office, who has a civil-rights division, telling me I can't read someone his rights?' " Davis said.

He later explained that the exemption allows federal investigators to "do follow-up interrogation" in cases deemed to be the most serious.

Davis also referenced mass shootings at the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. He called for "common-sense safeguards" that would prevent people with potentially dangerous mental illnesses from easily accessing guns.

"When you see the shooting at the school in Connecticut, you have to reflect as a nation, why is this happening and what can we do to stop it," he said. "If someone is diagnosed with a serious psychiatric illness, that person should not get a firearm. I don't care about the Second Amendment, I don't care about all these people saying everybody should have guns."

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